How to get around London in Style and Speed

Depending on who you believe (see here, here, and here), the average driving speed in London is between 6 and 12 mph, using surface transportation, and about 20 mph below ground. You might think that the best way to speed things up would be to take a helicopter, but one limousine company can offer you a way to get there fast.

That’s right. A fire engine limosine, courtesy of stretchlimos.co.uk. Here’s the real question. Can you get them to use the sirens? Yes, with a pang of guilt that you too could contribute to someone not believing that in fact that fire engine behind behind them is saving lives, speeding through the streets of london, in an imposing fraud, perhaps sirens a’blazen. Or, perhaps you can roll up to The Old Lady’s house in search of some traces of smoke. Who knows? Maybe the Queen herself could find it faster to get around town than that old horse and carriage.

Georgia: In the “Better Late than Never” Category…

Seven years and six months into his administration, President Bush seems to have realized that Vladamir Putin isn’t always such a nice guy. The Wall Street Journal reported today that the administration is putting all bilateral contacts with Russia under review. This occurred after a near face-off between a Coast Guard cutter and the Russian navy. As I have written previously, we are at least in part to blame for the fiasco in Georgia, and so this can be seen as corrective at best, and palliative at worst. Just like his father, had President Bush sent strong messages (perhaps with soldiers) before the invasion, perhaps there never would have been one to begin with.

This was a win/win/win for Russia. They managed to demonstrate to the west and elsewhere that they will have their views taken seriously, they invaded the portion of a neighbor that has many Russians, and they may well have destabilized alternative energy transmission paths that the U.S. proposed, demonstrating the old axiom that all war is over wealth.

President Clinton reminded us at the Democratic National Convention this week that we as a nation cannot go it alone, that it is not in our best interest to go it alone, and that cooperation amongst nations is best for the United States. I am glad we are standing by Georgia, even if it is very late, and I hope that other countries will send stronger messages than they have until now. I am referring in particular to Germany and France.

McCain v. Obama: Personality and Judgment

How does one take the measure of an individual? How will a person react under stress to unpredictable circumstance? President Bush was so unengaged that he probably didn’t know when he should have been feeling more stress. He failed to oversee little things, like the war in Iraq and the economy. One actually wonders what he did in the White House all of these years. But I digress.

John McCain likes to think of himself as a straight talker. In general I think that’s true but it’s not always the case. I liked that he took his change of heart to support drilling off the coast of California to the environmental lobby and told them to their face (even though I hate the idea of drilling off the coast). Having heard him talk I like how he has handled opposition when dealing with abortion. Still, I dislike that he did in fact flip flop on drilling, and I don’t like that he refused to answer a simple question by the press, like, “How many houses do you own?”

I am also deaply saddened by McCain’s resorting to negative campaigning, in spite of his protestations to the contrary. To me, negative campaigning is the loser’s last refuge, and here it is as if someone said to McCain, “Do you want to be known as a statesman nice guy loser, or do you want to win?” And he decided he wanted to win, damn his principles.

While the practice has been executed flawlessly by Republicans, it should be noted that Democrats can play the game as well, as Senator Clinton did in the primaries. As distasteful as behaving this way in the general is, it is unforgivable in primaries, and Clinton violated what some call the Reagan Rule, named after the President who reminded members of his party who the opposition was.

Barak Obama has done very little negative campaigning. He has another quality, however, that I like. He has stated openly that he is not an idealogue. He seems to take every situation as it is presented to him and responds appropriately. This makes him perhaps a more difficult public speaker because he can’t just blat out the one liners. It makes him unpreditable at times.

His level of education wards off some of my concern about his unpredictability, and he is not inarticulate.

This leads me to believe that Obama has better judgment and the appropriate personality for the job.

McCain v. Obama: The Economy

Bureau of Economics I typically surprise many of my friends with just how fiscally conservative I can be at times. I believe for some reason that people should get the government they pay for, and no more. To me that means not running a deficit. One of the best things we can do for our economy is balance the amount of money we’re taking in versus what is spent. I do not suggest that this needs to be done on a year by year basis, but rather on a decade by decade basis.

I do not believe in tax breaks for the rich, or even for the upper middle class. In the United States we have a creaking infrastructure, as I have previously mentioned. Our roads are in need of repair, our education system is in shambles, our health care system is reserved for the upper middle class who work, and we do not as a country save enough. To me that means we as individuals have to pay for all of these things somehow. Either we pay for them in our taxes or we pay elsewhere. If we pay elsewhere, often times those who cannot get left behind. In some of these areas I believe that to be bad policy.

Where do the candidates stand? Senator McCain wants a corporate tax cut from 35% to 25%. As Republican proposals go, this one is pretty mild, and nearly heretical for a Reagan Revolutionary. Indeed according to Wikipedia at least, McCain generally prefers reducing the deficit to other forms of tax cuts.

Recently, Barack Obama recently sat in a discussion next to Robert Rubin and said that at the time that he would not have been as fiscally conservative as President Clinton was. The problem with that statement is that it was at least in part that fiscal discipline that closed the budget deficit that itself caused interest rates to drop. His web site states that he would provide for a $10 billion foreclosure defense fund, and a $20 billion general stimulus package.

At the same time he wants to cut taxes for the middle class as well as for senior citizens. Once again, Obama does not say how he would pay for all of the programs he mentioned. I don’t have a problem with the programs, or even the bill for those programs. But he has to say how he is going to pay for those programs.

Until I hear more details from Obama, McCain gets this round.

Beware Best Western

The customers of Best Western are the latest to have their identities stolen. As the article goes on to say, the crime gangs are going to have a field day with such live and valuable information that included credit card numbers and home addresses. There’s a clear lesson here in authorization: nobody needs to have access to the aggregate data that Best Western had. It might be necessary to modify one or two reservations at once. Perhaps it might even be necessary to know how much of a block is sold. But the whole kitten caboodle? Nobody needs that information. Here are some protections Best Western could have taken:

Apply specific encryption of the credit card information and compartmentalize the use of any decryption key. Hotels have need to retain credit card information in order to guarantee bookings. Encrypting credit card data is nowhere near a perfect solution because there is relatively little clear text information and some of that can be guessed, like the first four digits.
Encrypt all backups and protect the decryption keys so that multilevel authorization is required to access them. Many backups are stolen. If they are stolen no encryption is perfect and so notification is necessary, but with encryption those whose information is stolen can take action, like have a house sitter or change credit card numbers.
Employ intrusion detection within the database. When a specific user acts outside a profile, flag it and see what is going on.

In perhaps a more perfect world a separate identity provider could retain identifying characteristics of an individual such as address and credit card number. Commerce likes some of this information because they can market to you, and absent legislation they have very little motivation to protect the information.